Press Release 7603

Following the statement by President of the Croatian Basketball Federation, Ivan Šuker, about the lack of reaction form the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the burning of the Croatian national flag at the basketball match between Crvena Zvezda and Zadar held in Belgrade on 22 December 2002, and for the purposes of truthfully informing the public, the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs wishes to emphasise the following:

1. In connection with the incident, the Chargé d'Affaires of the Serbia and Montenegro Embassy in Zagreb was summoned to the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 24 December 2002 and was handed the official protest. A Press Release (371/02) was issued the same day by the Croatian MFA, informing the public about the affair, which was broadcast by all Croatian media.
2. Croatian teams and federations, and their functionaries must take care of the functioning of the clubs, the regularity of contests, and the security measures for the matches, which unfortunately has not always been the case, because profit has often proven more important than investing in measures to prevent such incidents from occurring.
3. Although nobody form the Croatian Basketball Federation or the teams playing in the Goodyear League has asked for it, the Croatian Embassy to Serbia and Montenegro has on several occasions before the arrival of the Croatian players requested from the event organisers to take measures in order to prevent such incidents from occurring, and certain assurances have been given in this regard.
4. Unfortunately, recent events have shown that the violent behaviour of supporters is hard to deal with even on a neutral ground, as it was the case with the Crvena Zvezda supporters during the match against Zadar in Ljubljana yesterday.
5. Croatian MFA strongly condemns such behaviour, and once again wishes to emphasise the fact that the behaviour of the spectators is the responsibility of the organisers, clubs, federations and their managers that take part in organising these events.

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